I don’t know why I haven’t gotten into them sooner, but I am making more and more use of multibets at the moment.
What are multibets?
Multibets are bets that pay out based on the results of more than one event. In its simplest form, you can create a multibet that pays out only if every team you have selected wins. Multibets are a great way to increase the payout for multiple event betting, but they are much riskier.
Parlay betting is made available by agencies like Sports Alive where some, but not all of your bets need to win to obtain a payout. This mitigates some risk, but requires a greater investment because multiple bets are required. Parlay betting involves a pretty funky nomenclature based on the nature of the multibet, which includes terms like Trixie, Patent, Yankee, Lucky 15, Heinz, and so on.
This article will focus on the simplest of multibets, where you must get every result right to achieve a payout.
Example
Let’s say it’s the first round of a tennis tournament and you are presented with a range of low odds bets for the major players:
Djokovic to win his match – 1.12
Nadal to win his match – 1.02
Murray to win his match – 1.20
Federer to win his match – 1.15
If you placed four individual bets on these results at $25 each, and all four players had won you would have received:
Djokovic win – $3.00
Nadal win – $0.50
Murray win – $5.00
Federer win – $3.75
The total winnings would be $12.25, which equates to 1.1225 odds on a $100 bet.
If, however you made a multibet that paid out only if all four players won, the odds would calculated as the individual odds multiplied by each other: 1.12 x 1.02 x 1.20 x 1.15 = 1.58.
So if you had made a $100 multibet instead and got all four results correct you would have a profit of $58 instead of $12.25.
As you can see, multibets provide a much greater payout if you get the results correct. Keep in mind, however that if one or more of these players hadn’t won, you would have received a loss of $100, whereas with individual bets, you would still have received winnings from the other matches. For this reason, multibets provide greater payouts with greater risk.
When I use them
I typically used multibets for low odds bets like in early rounds of tennis tournaments. If you are looking for a big payout, you can combine two or more high odds bets to create a potentially huge profit. For example, a multibet this weekend for West Brom to beat Manchester City (6.00), West Ham to beat Aston Villa (6.00) and Hull City to beat Sunderland (4.40), would have odds of 158.40. A $10 bet would have a potential profit of $1,574!